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<body>On Sat, 13 Jul 2013 23:43:53 -0400, Doug Hall <doughalldev@gmail.com> wrote:<br><br><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0.80ex; border-left: #0000FF 2px solid; padding-left: 1ex"><div dir="ltr">Practice this comment:<div><br></div><div>Sure, there are companies which you could pay, that you could call upon for help when needed. However, from personal experience, answers to the most common problems are readily available from a Google/Bing/Whatever search. If you have a more complicated problem, then call me or send an email to the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts list, asking for help. I personally would hold off paying a third party support company until I needed them.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Many people are initially concerned about the lack of official support, but unless you have a complicated piece of customized software (like Oracle Financials), then your own IT people should be smart enough to make it work. Linux is not Windows, so many IT support people will have to learn something new. It's not that complicated, however. There's a HUGE community of people working with it. Not having a phone number to call is a 20th century excuse. Today, support is available in so many forms. Ask the guy how many times he called Microsoft last year!</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>On a dual boot box (W7 and Linux Mint) for some reason the W7 partition decided to reassign the drive letters. The C and D drive letters were switched. Searching for an answer turned up no answers including M$' sites. I decide to try a live chat which desended into frustration because I wanted the answer to how to fix the problem without paying any money. M$ refused to give an answer without cash. I ended up just reinstalling W7 after backing up all the data files and later reinstalling grub.</div><div><br></div><div>Even if you called M$ it is quite possible you will be asked to fork over some money. Often similar problems with Linux can be fixed without spending any money with a quick search and little bit of reading to make sure the issue is the same yours.</div><div><br></div><div>My wife who has a couple of photo editing app that are only available on Windows requires a Windows install (not Adobe Photoshop). But as she has been using Linux Mint for the last several months as her primary OS and has developed a passionate hatred for Windows. So for her the issue is not the OS, she would ditch Windows if she could find a photo editing application she liked; she does not like GIMP. So the issue about support to me is lie to be blunt; the real reason is fear of change. Now if they said we use XYZ and it is mission critical then they have very legitimate reason not to switch assuming there is no Linux equivalent. Office macros are often problematic but macros can be a serious security risk so I would tell them to ditch the macros for security.</div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0.80ex; border-left: #0000FF 2px solid; padding-left: 1ex"><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div></blockquote><div><snip></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0.80ex; border-left: #0000FF 2px solid; padding-left: 1ex"><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div>
</blockquote><br><br><br><div id="M2Signature"><div>-- </div><div><div>Jay Lozier<br>jslozier@gmail.com</div><div><br></div></div></div></body></html>